text,comments,created_at,context,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,reviewed_on,id,theme,provenance,work_id
"It first behooves us to comprehend what conscience is; we must seek the definition from the derivation of the word. For just as when through the mind and understanding men grasp a knowledge of things, and from this are said 'to know,' this is the source of the word 'knowledge,' so also when they have a sense of divine judgment, as a witness joined to them, which does not allow them to hide their sins from being accused before the Judge's tribunal, this sense is called 'conscience.' For it is a certain mean between God and man, because it does not allow man to suppress within himself what he knows, but pursues him to the point of convicting him.
(III, 19, 15)","•found expanded quotation in Google Books: David Little's Religion, Order, Law, 51n. ",2006-10-03 00:00:00 UTC,"","""For just as when through the mind and understanding men grasp a knowledge of things, and from this are said 'to know,' this is the source of the word 'knowledge,' so also when they have a sense of divine judgment, as a witness joined to them, which does not allow them to hide their sins from being accused before the Judge's tribunal, this sense is called 'conscience.'""",Court,2011-09-29 16:06:39 UTC,2011-09-29,8732,"","Reading Frederick Kiefer's Writing on the Renaissance Stage: Written Words, Printed Pages, Metaphoric Books (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1996), 112.",3428
"If the Gentiles by nature have law righteousness engraved upon their minds, we surely cannot say they are utterly blind as to the conduct of life. There is nothing more common than for a man to be sufficiently instructed in a right standard of conduct by natural law (of which the apostle is here speaking).",•I've included twice: Law and Engraving,2006-10-03 00:00:00 UTC,"","""If the Gentiles by nature have law righteousness engraved upon their minds, we surely cannot say they are utterly blind as to the conduct of life. There is nothing more common than for a man to be sufficiently instructed in a right standard of conduct by natural law (of which the apostle is here speaking).""","",2009-09-14 19:33:44 UTC,,8733,Romans 2:14-15,"Reading Frederick Kiefer's Writing on the Renaissance Stage: Written Words, Printed Pages, Metaphoric Books. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1996. p. 118.",3428
"that inward law, which we have ... described as written, even engraved, upon the hearts of all, in a sense asserts the very same things that are to be learned from the two Tables.","",2006-10-03 00:00:00 UTC,"","""that inward law, which we have ... described as written, even engraved, upon the hearts of all, in a sense asserts the very same things that are to be learned from the two Tables.""","",2009-09-14 19:33:44 UTC,,8735,"","Reading Frederick Kiefer's Writing on the Renaissance Stage: Written Words, Printed Pages, Metaphoric Books. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1996. p. 119-20.",3428
"It is better for us to suffer the order of the world to manage us without further inquisition. A mind warranted from prejudice, hath a marvellous preferment to tranquility. Men that censure and controule their judges, doe never duly submit themselves unto them. How much more docile and tractable are simple and uncurious mindes found both towards the lawes of religion and Politike decrees, than these over-vigilant and nice wits, teachers of divine and humane causes? there is nothing in mans invention, wherein is so much likelyhood, possibilitie and profit [as in Pyrrhonism]. This representeth man bare and naked, acknowledging his naturall weaknesse, apt to receive from above some strange power, disfurnished of all humane knowledge, and so much the more fitte to harbour divine understanding, disannulling his judgment, that so he may give more place unto faith: Neither misbeleeving nor establishing any doctrine or opinion repugnant unto common lawes and observances, humble, obedient, disciplinable and studious; a sworne enemy to Heresie, and by consequence exempting himselfe from all vaine and irreligious opinions, invented and brought up by false Sects. It is a white sheet prepared to take from the finger of God what form soever it shall please him to imprint therein.(pp. 211-212)","•INTEREST. A neat twist in the blank slate story. Used by skeptics!! See also Charron entry and start searching for ""sheet"" in HDIS.",2005-04-06 00:00:00 UTC,Volume II,"The Pyrrhonist's mind ""is a white sheet prepared to take from the finger of God what form soever it shall please him to imprint therein.""","",2009-09-14 19:33:45 UTC,,8746,Blank Slate,"Reading Bredvold, Louis. The Intellectual Milieu of John Dryden. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962. p. 32.",3435
"Men do not know the natural infirmity of their mind: it does nothing but ferret and quest and keeps incessantly whirling arounnd building up and becoming entangled in its own work, like our silkworms, and is suffocated in it. 'A mouse in a pitch barrel [erasmus]'. ...Crates said of the writings of heraclitus, that they needed a good swimmer for a reader, so that the depth and weight of heraclitus' learning should not sink him and drown him.",REVISIT and find Erasmus,2004-02-05 00:00:00 UTC,"","""Men do not know the natural infirmity of their mind: it does nothing but ferret and quest and keeps incessantly whirling arounnd building up and becoming entangled in its own work, like our silkworms, and is suffocated in it."" ","",2009-09-14 19:33:45 UTC,,8750,"",Dave Moon,3438
"",•This is a Senecan sentiment. See footnote on page 45 of Levi.•REVISIT. I don't understand.,2004-10-04 00:00:00 UTC,"Bk. I, ch. 16, §2, p. 122","The human mind is 'un degout de l'immortelle substance""","",2009-09-14 19:33:50 UTC,,8898,"",Reading French Moralists by Anthony Levi (p. 45),3471
"But to press [these Roman Catholic critics of Skepticism] further and show them that they do not well understand their business, I will inform them that this principle of mine, which it pleases them to call Pyrrhonism, is something more serviceable to piety and divine working than any other whatever, and very far from clashing with them, serviceable, I say, as much for the generation and propagation of piety as for conversion. Theology, even like mysticism, teaches us that to prepare the soul properly for God and his working, and to qualify it, cleanse it, strip it, and denude it of all opinion, belief, inclination, make it like a white sheet of paper, dead to itself and the world, so that God may live and operate in it.(p. 35)","•Bredvold's translation of Petit traité. Using 1646 edition. •English translations of De la Sagesse (1601) by Samson Leonard in 1606, 1615?, 1620?, 1630, 1658, and 1670. By George Stanhope in 1697 and 1707.•Make that ""Sampson Lennard"" (ODNB, 10/3/2006)",2005-04-06 00:00:00 UTC,"","To properly prepare a soul for God, one must ""qualify it, cleanse it, strip it, and denude it of all opinion, belief, inclination, make it like a white sheet of paper, dead to itself and the world, so that God may live and operate in it.""","",2009-09-14 19:33:52 UTC,,8935,Blank Slate,"Reading Bredvold, Louis. The Intellectual Milieu of John Dryden. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1962. p. 35.",3480
"Once I had established these maxims and set them on one side together with the truths of faith, which have always been foremost among my beliefs, I judged that I could freely undertake to rid myself of all the rest of my opinions. As I expected to be able to achieve this more readily by talking with other men than by staying shut up in the stove-heated room where I had had all these thoughts, I set out on my travels again before the end of winter. Throughout the following nine years I did nothing but roam about in the world, trying to be a spectator rather than an actor in all the comedies that are played out there. Reflecting especially upon the points in every subject which might make it suspect and give occasion for us to make mistakes, I kept uprooting from my mind any errors that might previously have slipped into it. In doing this I was not copying the sceptics, who doubt only for the sake of doubting and pretend to be always undecided; on the contrary, my whole aim was to reach certainty - to cast aside the loose earth and sand so as to come upon rock or clay. In this I think I was quite successful. For I tried to expose the falsity or uncertainty of the propositions I was examining by clear and certain arguments, not by weak conjectures; and I never encountered any proposition so doubtful that I could not draw from it some quite certain conclusion, if only the conclusion that it contained nothing certain. And, just as in pulling down an old house we usually keep the remnants for use in building a new one, so in destroying all those opinions of mine that I judged ill-founded I made various observations and acquired many experiences which I have since used in establishing more certain opinions. Moreover, I continued practising the method I had prescribed for myself. Besides taking care in general to conduct all my thoughts according to its rules, I set aside some hours now and again to apply it more particularly to mathematical problems. I also applied it to certain other problems which I could put into something like mathematical form by detaching them from all the principles of the other sciences, which I did not find sufficiently secure (as you will see I have done in many problems discussed later in this book). Thus, while appearing to live like those concerned only to lead an agreeable and blameless life, who take care to keep their pleasures free from vices, and who engage in every honest pastime in order to enjoy their leisure without boredom, I never stopped pursuing my project, and I made perhaps more progress in the knowledge of the truth than I would have if I had done nothing but read books or mix with men of letters.(Part Three, p. 125)","•Descartes's first published work (albeit anon.) was Discourse and Essays. Appeared in June 1637. Latin translation in 1644 (omitting Geometry) published in Amsterdam. •See also the mixing of metaphors with ""loose earth and sand""--although I suppose weeds won't grow in rock and clay.•I am having problems keeping 'Weeding' and 'Roots' as distinct subcategories. (10/22/2003)

",2003-10-03 00:00:00 UTC,Part Three,"""I kept uprooting from my mind any errors that might previously have slipped into it.""","",2009-12-12 18:16:18 UTC,2003-10-22,9226,"",Past Masters,3562
"I endeavoured to explain the most important of these truths in a treatise which certain considerations prevent me from publishing, and I know of no better way to make them known than by summarizing its contents. My aim was to include in it everything I thought I knew about the nature of material things before I began to write it. Now a painter cannot represent all the different sides of a solid body equally well on his flat canvas, and so he chooses one of the principal ones, sets it facing the light, and shades the others so as to make them stand out only when viewed from the perspective of the chosen side. In just the same way, fearing that I could not put everything I had in mind into my discourse, I undertook merely to expound quite fully what I understood about light. Then, as the occasion arose, I added something about the sun and fixed stars, because almost all light comes from them; about the heavens, because they transmit light; about planets, comets and the earth, because they reflect light; about terrestrial bodies in particular, because they are either coloured or transparent or luminous; and finally about man, because he observes these bodies. But I did not want to bring these matters too much into the open, for I wished to be free to say what I thought about them without having either to follow or to refute the accepted opinions of the learned. So I decided to leave our world wholly for them to argue about, and to speak solely of what would happen in a new world. I therefore supposed that God now created, somewhere in imaginary spaces, enough matter to compose such a world; that he variously and randomly agitated the different parts of this matter so as to form a chaos as confused as any the poets could invent; and that he then did nothing but lend his regular concurrence to nature, leaving it to act according to the laws he established. First of all, then, I described this matter, trying to represent it so that there is absolutely nothing, I think, which is clearer and more intelligible, with the exception of what has just been said about God and the soul. In fact I expressly supposed that this matter lacked all those forms or qualities about which they dispute in the Schools, and in general that it had only those features the knowledge of which was so natural to our souls that we could not even pretend not to know them. Further, I showed what the laws of nature were, and without basing my arguments on any principle other than the infinite perfections of God, I tried to demonstrate all those laws about which we could have any doubt, and to show that they are such that, even if God created many worlds, there could not be any in which they failed to be observed. After this, I showed how, in consequence of these laws, the greater part of the matter of this chaos had to become disposed and arranged in a certain way, which made it resemble our heavens; and how, at the same time, some of its parts had to form an earth, some planets and comets, and others a sun and fixed stars. Here I dwelt upon the subject of light, explaining at some length the nature of the light that had to be present in the sun and the stars, how from there it travelled instantaneously across the immense distances of the heavens, and how it was reflected from the planets and comets to the earth. To this I added many points about the substance, position, motions and all the various qualities of these heavens and stars; and I thought I had thereby said enough to show that for anything observed in the heavens and stars of our world, something wholly similar had to appear, or at least could appear, in those of the world I was describing. From that I went on to speak of the earth in particular: how, although I had expressly supposed that God had put no gravity into the matter of which it was formed, still all its parts tended exactly towards its centre; how, there being water and air on its surface, the disposition of the heavens and heavenly bodies (chiefly the moon), had to cause an ebb and flow similar in all respects to that observed in our seas, as well as a current of both water and air from east to west like the one we observe between the tropics; how mountains, seas, springs and rivers could be formed naturally there, and how metals could appear in mines, plants grow in fields, and generally how all the bodies we call 'mixed' or 'composite' could come into being there. Among other things, I took pains to make everything belonging to the nature of fire very clearly understandable, because I know nothing else in the world, apart from the heavenly bodies, that produces light. Thus I made clear how it is formed and fuelled, how sometimes it possesses only heat without light, and sometimes light without heat; how it can produce different colours and various other qualities in different bodies; how it melts some bodies and hardens others; how it can consume almost all bodies, or turn them into ashes and smoke; and finally how it can, by the mere force of its action, form glass from these ashes - something I took particular pleasure in describing since it seems to me as wonderful a transmutation as any that takes place in nature.(Part Five, p. 131-3)",•Descartes's first published work (albeit anon.) was Discourse and Essays. Appeared in June 1637. Latin translation in 1644 (omitting Geometry) published in Amsterdam. •Cross-reference: Bears on writing out of whole minds in Clarissa?,2003-10-03 00:00:00 UTC,Part Five,"""Now a painter cannot represent all the different sides of a solid body equally well on his flat canvas, and so he chooses one of the principal ones, sets it facing the light, and shades the others so as to make them stand out only when viewed from the perspective of the chosen side. In just the same way, fearing that I could not put everything I had in mind into my discourse, I undertook merely to expound quite fully what I understood about light.""","",2011-11-24 17:11:58 UTC,,9227,"",Past Masters,3562
"Hit shall be when the plesaunt lemys shyne
Of yowre most fresshe and ynly gret bewté
In at the wyndowes of my derkid eyene. Then wolle the chambir of my thought trewly
Of plesaunce take a light in eche parté
Such ioy wolle him aray so fresshe and hy
That waken must myn heuy hert slepé
Out of his fowle and sluggissh slogardé.
He shall no more then slepe, bi Seynt Quyntyne,
When that this light hath take on him entré
In at the wyndowes of my derkid eyne.
(ll. 1606-1616)","",2012-05-02 15:04:44 UTC,"","""Then wolle the chambir of my thought trewly / Of plesaunce take a light in eche parté / Such ioy wolle him aray so fresshe and hy / That waken must myn heuy hert slepé / Out of his fowle and sluggissh slogardé.""","",2012-05-02 15:14:04 UTC,,19749,Interiority,Contributed by A. C. Spearing,7249